Rules questions can go to the mailing list or to our Ogre forum. Yahoo Groups users will find several Ogre-related groups, including Ogre-GEV (discussions and PBEM), OGRE-Miniatures (miniatures, obviously), and SFBay_OGRE (scheduling of events in the San Francisco Bay area).

Ogre On Computer

A. Origin Systems did a game in 1986. It's long out of print. During the Ogre Kickstarter project, we promised that Ogre would appear in some kind of digital form. Therefore, it will. But details are hazy right now.

A. That was unofficial, released without permission. The author wrote it for fun, and his office-mates put it on the net without telling him. He transferred all rights in it to SJ Games, and we would not be averse to getting it debugged and hanging a graphics front end on it, if we found someone interested in the project.

Ogre Miniatures

A. No, but we still have some in stock at Warehouse 23. As a result of the Ogre Kickstarter project's success, we have committed to bringing them back at some point. Again, details are hazy at the moment . . .

A. These are giant (1/60) scale vehicles, cast in resin. Check the Macrotures page for current information.

The idea originated with the crew at Sci-Fi Supply in Orlando, FL. They built a number of Macroture units, with our blessing. They decided not to go into production, but they have run a number of events at GenCon and DexCon, using their prototypes.

History

Background

A. No, it's a completely original background and technology. When Ogre was originally designed for Metagaming, the plan was to seek a Bolo license. But it cost too much to be worthwhile for such a small game (the original edition of Ogre was a $2.95 minigame). The owner of Metagaming said, "Invent a different background." Steve was happy to comply, as he had some ideas that were incompatible with the Bolo background. So it all worked out.

The Bolo stories remain one of the two original inspirations behind Ogre – the other being a story called "Gottlos," by Colin Kapp – and we acknowledge the debt to Laumer's apocalyptic vision!

A. Because Laumer's Bolo supertanks ARE self-aware, the original Ogre background explicitly made the Ogres NOT self-aware. They are programmed with excellent personality simulators and seem self-aware, but that is just to make them easier to command verbally (as well as more terrifying to the foe). But they are just machines; they have no "soul." Some of Laumer's Bolo stores are quite sentimental . . . "monster tank with a heart of gold." The original Ogre background presented the contrasting view: they are simply engines of destruction, doing what they are programmed to do.

But a decade later, as the Ogre background developed, we decided that at the end of the Last War some Ogres did develop self-awareness. Why? Purely for literary and gaming reasons. Self-aware Ogres would behave in ways that "programmed" ones wouldn't, making for an interesting variety of opponents. Self-aware Ogres could even, conceivably, be used as player characters, and the Factory States period is intended as a roleplaying background. And it will let us explore some ideas of machine personalities that will be very different from Laumer's "gentle giant" Bolos!

Tournaments and Conventions

A. Absolutely. And for our other games too. See our convention support page. And check out the scenarios on the web; you're free to use all this material at conventions, whether we sponsor them officially or not.